<Begin Segment 18>

[Ed. note: This transcript has been extensively edited by the narrator]

JG: What I'm wondering is, if you could spin it out a bit, because I think it's really important -- is this kind of relationship you have and have had to oral history. It sounds, at least in the way you describe it in the early years, as if there was a lot of trial and error trying to figure out what this field is, and what it does. You have certainly raised the visibility of oral history here in southern California. I'm just wondering if you could talk a little about, you know, Betty Mitson, and the origins of the Cal State Fullerton Oral History Program.

AH: Well, Fullerton had one of the earliest oral history programs in the United States, and it grew very quickly because it was a different type of oral history program. It certainly was very influential on me. It was different in several ways. One, instead of just using professionals or graduate students for its interviewers, the Fullerton program used students, mostly undergraduate students, who were taking the oral history classes. They certainly didn't distinguish, actually, whether they were graduate or undergraduate students. They felt that a student was capable of doing important work. It was felt that, if they learned the method of doing oral history, and they learned the subject matter of their interviews, they could put those two things together and produce something that would be valuable. And so Fullerton was seen as kind of dangerous by other oral history operations. I got into Japanese American studies and oral history in 1972. Gary Shumway, the founding director of the CSUF Oral History Program, got me money to go back to an oral history conference held in West Point, at the U.S. Military Academy, in 1973. That was the National Colloquium of Oral History, and I had to give a talk there about the relationship of oral history and social history. At that time, I felt I knew almost nothing about social history and even less about oral history. But I worked really hard on my topic and I made this presentation. It went pretty well. And then I also went to all the sessions at the colloquium, so I really did learn a lot about oral history. Now, Betty Mitson, when she took my class on historical methodology, she had just the previous semester taken an oral history class from Gary Shumway. So she knew about oral history and she was already doing oral histories for the different projects in the Oral History Program. What she asked me in the class was whether, instead of writing a paper, she could do more interviews. I said, "No, I'm not sure I believe in oral history. I want you to write a research paper. "Listen," she said," Dr. Shumway had me write a paper on the Japanese American experience during World War II, so I'm beyond that. I'm ready to do some more oral histories, or I'll start a collection of Japanese American documents over in the university library's department of special collections, or I'll do something like that." I said, "Well, why don't we see what we can work out?" And she said, "Let's do it this way: I will bring into class some interviews that are in the Oral History Program's collection that have to do with Japanese Americans." And that's when she brought into our class the tapes of the interviews that were done with Orange County Nisei which started: "Where were you on December 7, 1941?" She put this big reel-to-reel tape recorder right in the middle of the seminar table we were seated around and played these tapes. I became so hooked on oral history by the end of the time I was listening to these tapes, that I said, "This is so powerful." And this really was for me one of those ah-ha experiences. It really was. The light bulb went on. I was converted to oral history as both a methodology and a way of understanding past experience.

Now, Gary Shumway, a Mormon from southeastern Utah, was a very religious person, and used to talk about oral history almost as though it involved a religious conversion. I never felt that way. I felt it entailed an intellectual and emotional conversion, but I didn't think oral history was a religion. This was not a faith-based activity for me, but instead a research-based activity that I wanted to do. And the thing that I would always emphasize after my "conversion" is how much the interviewer has to do prior to the interview to make an interview work. If you don't do that, interviews become gab sessions based upon superficial rapport developed between interviewers and interviewees. An oral history interview is a conversation, and somebody else looking at it thinks they're seeing two people just talking. But it's a conversation with a difference, for it is informed, on the part of the person doing the interview, by research, and then on the part of the person being interviewed, by lived experience.

Now, in 1997 when I went up to Seattle to do some workshops and other things for Densho, I communicated that point very strongly to its staff. And Tom Ikeda, Densho's director, was very appreciative of that, and thanked me for raising the bar for Densho on what they were doing. This is really important. But I really pushed the idea, when I taught a course on the Japanese American experience, that before the students did their interviews, they read about eight to ten pertinent books in that class and wrote reports on them. The students would read books by Roger Daniels, Richard Drinnon, Michi Weglyn, Gary Okihiro, and other scholars. I didn't want the students winging their interviews. So I had them take a test before they even were released to go out and do their interviews. Because I didn't want the students relying upon their charm; I wanted them to know about the subject matter.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.